The Pale Blue Dot.
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan , Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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Just to remind us just how very, very small we really are.
I hadn't read the book since it was first published in 1994 and lost my copy. I'm going on a cruise in December and one of my favorite things to do on a cruise is to sit on the balcony for hours after dark and sip wine while reading, listening to the water splashing against the side of the ship sounding like waves coming onto the sand of a beach. I went to Amazon and found a copy of Pale Blue Dot in hardcover for only $2 (and $3.30 S&H) and it arrived the other day. It's in brand new condition and the hardest part is saving my re-reading of it for 43 more days.
I keep picking it up and putting it down and it's sitting right next to my computer. I think tomorrow I'll go ahead and put it in my suitcase so I don't forget it. lol.
Although Sagan's description is moving, it is hardly the last word. Sagan is providing a perspective, not necessarily the perspective.
From the perspective of cold distant space, the earth and it's inhabitants are all one, from the perspective of sociological and historical developments among men, the inhabitants of this planet are anything but "one". The most prominent thing about earthly existence , of plants animals , geologic formations, and people is apparent diversity.
Can this diversity be reconciled ? That is always the question.
Now with the theories of parallel universes and the multiverse there could be an infinite number of pale blue dots.
Great piece, thanks for sharing Randy!
It is humbling indeed. Thanks for this very nice article Randy!